George Monbiot Quotes

This ability to exist in pieces is what some adults call resilience. And I suppose in some way it is a kind of resilience, a horrible resilience that makes adults believe children forget trauma.

The justification for early boarding is based on a massive but common misconception. Because physical hardship in childhood makes you physically tough, the founders of the system believed that emotional hardship must make you emotionally tough. It does the opposite.

These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off.

I think I was as mentally tough as I've ever been. I felt like I handled the situation both on and off the court extremely well. I felt like I needed to.

I should say that mental strength is No. 1, experience [is] No. 2, physical strength is No. 3, and genetic ability that you're getting from Mother Nature probably comes after.

It is not just a person's physical constitution, their intellegence, their education, or even their social conditioning that enables them to withstand hardship. Much more significant is their inner development. And while some may be able to survive through sheer willpower, the ones who suffer the least are those who have a high degree of patience and courage in the face of adversity.

Mental strength is really important because you either win or lose in your mind.

I don't think Wayne Rooney would be affected if you booed him, that's just how he is, but others go under. They really suffer with it. I think I'm somewhere in the middle... now. I've become tougher as I've got older.

When you have a tough childhood, you either cry or make a joke.

People have to learn sometimes not only how much the heart, but how much the head, can bear.

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

Human beings have enormous resilience.

I have a high tolerance for pain - both physical and mental.

When you grow up around sadness, it affects the way you see the world.

You have to be mentally strong to withstand the ridicule of other children and the stares of adults.

After an injury, I think you have to be strong mentally.

I've always been good at handling stuff mentally.

Oftentimes, experiencing tragedy very young can strangely give you a kind of equilibrium.

In a cruel land, you either learned to laugh at cruelty or spent your life weeping.

There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first.

If you have high self-esteem, you might still know times of emotional suffering, but less often and with faster recovery-your resilience is greater.

The hardest thing you can do is smile when you are ill, in pain, or depressed. But this no-cost remedy is a necessary first half-step if you are to start on the road to recovery.

Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself.

I was powerless over my childhood but the coping strategies that I developed, to survive, all of which were creative and brilliant and got me through, as an adult those became my defects of character. Those became my shortcomings, control and all that kind of stuff... and that's my responsibility. I was a blameless child in what happened in the home; I take responsibility for my behaviors as an adult.

It’s called mind over matter. If we don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” When a bit of me hurts, I always mind.